


Search and Rescue

by embroiderama



Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Malaria, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 23:54:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Manhattan was covered in slush and snow, Neal was revisted by the consequences of a far more tropical adventure, and Mozzie found a reason to be glad Neal wore a tracking anklet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Search and Rescue

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for [](http://angelita26.livejournal.com/profile)[**angelita26**](http://angelita26.livejournal.com/)'s [prompt](http://whitecollarhc.livejournal.com/165037.html?thread=1358765#t1358765) for H/C Advent. This is one of those stories in which real medical details are more of a garnish than a main ingredient.

Neal huddled in his bed, buried under a pile of blankets but still shivering convulsively. He clutched the blankets around his neck to keep out the winter chill that seeped in through windows, but it was pointless. He knew it was pointless but he couldn't help pulling the covers more tightly around himself, even if just for the illusion of making himself feel better.

"I'll f-feel better tomorrow," he told himself. All he had to do was suffer through the chills and sweats for one day, then he could get himself together to go to a clinic and get a prescription for the antimalarials that he hoped he'd never have to take again. It had been eight years since the botched job that had left him feverish and weak in a hospital in South America, but he remembered all too clearly what it had felt like. Neal shook with a renewed chill and burrowed deeper under the blankets just as he heard his door open.

"I found something you should look into," Mozzie said as he walked inside, and though Neal couldn't see him he knew the moment that Mozzie spotted him. "Neal? Should I come back with a hazmat suit?"

"N-n-n-no n-need," Neal stuttered through the shivers that shook him. "You c-can't get this f-from me."

"What exactly is _this_?" Mozzie's voice sounded closer, and Neal pushed the blankets down just far enough to uncover the top of his head and his eyes. Mozzie took a step back. "You look remarkably awful, you know?"

"R-remember I told you about V-v-v-venezuela?"

"Malaria? Seriously? Do you have medications?"

Neal shook his head and tugged the covers back up.

"I'll get them for you. Just try not to fry your brain while I'm gone." Mozzie patted Neal's shoulder through the many layers of cloth. "It might take a little while."

"Th-thanks." Neal closed his eyes and pulled more tightly into his ball as he heard Mozzie walk out the door. Belatedly, Neal wished that he'd asked Mozzie for some water or tea or aspirin, but even the thought of sitting up enough to drink something and take some pills sounded like far too much work for his frozen, aching body. Actually getting out of bed to retrieve the supplies himself was impossible.

The shivers started to lessen, and after a while Neal didn't feel as cold, but he still felt as if he'd been run over by a bus. Much like the metaphorical bus, the relapse had hit him from out of nowhere, and even as it hit him he knew he was going down hard. He'd been working long hours with Peter then coming home to work more with Mozzie, sleeping poorly, drinking too much coffee, and eating the kind of convenient food that he knew didn't do him any favors. Now the city was in the middle of a cold snap, snow and slush and ice covering everything, freezing winds cutting through window cracks and blowing through the layers of wool and cotton he wore to protect himself from the chill.

He'd set himself up, and the relapse had knocked him down. Sweating under his pile of blankets, Neal dropped off into sleep. When he woke an uncertain amount of time later, Neal had to wrestle his way out of a damp, clinging mass, and it was only when the refreshingly cool air of the room hit his skin that he realized he'd been fighting his way out of his pile of blankets. Neal panted, looking around the room to find himself alone. Mozzie had been there, he was sure he remembered that but there was something else.

Something...

 _I'm late for the meet,_ Neal thought, suddenly panicked that he was supposed to be meeting Mozzie and...he couldn't remember, but he knew there wasn't time to delay. Neal put on his shoes, grabbed his coat, and pulled the coat on as he jogged down the stairs. Outside, Neal felt shocking prickles of cold on his skin and looked up into the gray-dark sky to see snow falling down through the beam of a streetlight. He shivered but it felt good, and he started off down the street toward the park.

~~~

Mozzie muttered to himself as he hurried up the stairs to Neal's apartment. It had taken him longer than he expected to procure the anti-malarial drugs for Neal, and the last thing he wanted was for Neal's brain to cook itself. It was already marinating in a veritable stew of single-celled organisms, and Mozzie shuddered, reminding himself that human to human transmission wasn't possible and that the likelihood of a mosquito picking up the malaria infection and passing it on in New York City in the winter was infinitesimally small.

Inside Neal's apartment, Mozzie got a bottle of water from the refrigerator, dismissing the idea of wine for somebody in Neal's condition, and talked to Neal as he walked over to the bed. When he discovered that the bed was unoccupied, aside from what was no doubt a thriving colony of bacteria in the damp bedclothes, he went looking for Neal in the bathroom. When that proved fruitless, he checked the ridiculously large closet and then the balcony, but Neal was nowhere to be found.

Mozzie stood in the center of the apartment, squinting his eyes as he looked for evidence of who might have abducted Neal. Nothing other than Neal's bedding was out of place from how it had been when Mozzie left a few hours earlier, and the only items missing were Neal's shoes, which had been near the bed, and his winter coat, which had been draped over a chair. Putting aside the less likely possibilities, the evidence suggested that Neal was almost certainly walking around Manhattan in his pajamas in the middle of a snow storm.

_Not good._

Mozzie ran down the stairs and back outside, but though foot traffic was currently lighter than normal due to the weather there were nonetheless too many overlapping sets of footprints in the slushy snow on the sidewalk for Mozzie to be able to track Neal's path. Mozzie checked the immediate vicinity but when he didn't see any sign of his friend he sighed heavily and made the call he had absolutely hoped to avoid.

"Suit? I need you to help me find Neal."

He was going to have to burn yet another phone number but it was more than worth the sacrifice to find Neal.

~~~

"What do you mean, you need me to help you find Neal? If he's not currently available for whatever scheme you're working on, then that's not really a problem as far as I'm concerned." Peter took a deep breath to calm himself. He had just wrapped up his work and was on his way to his car with an eye toward enjoying a quiet, snowy Saturday evening with his wife, and a phone call from Neal's weird little friend wasn't really part of his plan.

"Thank you, no, I'm actually concerned for Neal's safety. Wellbeing. Whatever!"

"What exactly do you mean?"

"I mean that Neal is sick, and I think he's wandered out onto the street in some kind of _fevered delirium_!"

"If you're kidding me, I'm not really enjoying the joke."

"I'm not kidding. I left to get Neal some medications, and when I returned to June's he was gone. And before you ask, I don't think there was an foul play involved."

"Great." Peter pushed through the door to the parking deck and quickened his steps. "What kind of fever are we talking about here? Neal seemed a little bit off yesterday but I thought it was just a cold that he'd sleep off over the weekend."

Mozzie sighed heavily. "If, theoretically, Neal had been involved in a job in the Amazon basin once upon a theoretical time, there could be some consequences that could revisit him several years later."

"What kind of consequences are we talking about? And please stop couching everything in theoreticals. I'm not trying to do anything here other than help you find Neal."

"Fine. It's malaria."

Peter paused as he was getting into his car. " _Malaria_?"

"Yes. Now will you help me find him before he walks into the East River or something?"

"I'm in my car and on the way. As soon as I hang up with you I'm going to pull up his location, and I should be close in maybe ten minutes."

"Great. I'll be looking around outside June's."

Peter didn't answer. He hung up and made his way out onto the street, and at the first light he hit he pulled up Neal's tracker on his phone. The blinking dot that represented Neal was sitting still in the middle of Riverside Park, and the tracking history showed Peter a meandering path between June's mansion and Neal's current location. Peter looked around at the street and sidewalk, much less populated than normal for a Saturday evening and covered with a growing layer of snow and slush. Peter was chilly even inside the car, and when he thought about Neal out there sick and no doubt dressed too lightly for the weather he couldn't suppress a surge of worry. As the light turned green, he plugged in his bubble light, put it on top of the car and made his way north as quickly as possible.

He bullied his way around other cars and through intersections, and when the tracker showed Neal still in the same spot he called Mozzie back. "I'm headed to Riverside Park near 75th Street. I'll be there in about two minutes."

"On my way," Mozzie said, and Peter hung up to focus on getting to Neal.

Peter pulled into a spot near the park entrance closest to Neal's location and got out of the car, shivering instantly at the crisp air and the falling snow. He walked closer to the spot indicated by Neal's tracker, but at first glance he didn't see Neal anywhere. Peter checked the tracker again then began to look closer, examining the shadows cast by streetlights, and in a darker patch of shadow where a bench was positioned right next to a tree he saw a shape that didn't belong. "Neal," Peter asked softly, "is that you?"

The shape didn't respond but as Peter got closer he saw a familiar mop of dark hair and a coat that he knew was Neal's. "Damn it, are you trying to freeze to death out here?" Peter knelt down on the snow-covered grass to get a better look, and he couldn't see Neal's face but what he could see wasn't good. Neal had his legs pulled up close to his chest, his arms wrapped around himself and his head tipped forward to rest on his knees. His whole body was shaking, and when Peter put his hand on Neal's head he found soaked wet hair and a fever that was high enough to keep Neal's body hot even in the winter weather.

"Neal, hey, come on." Peter gently nudged Neal's head up, and when Neal saw Peter he jerked his head back until he smacked it on the tree behind him.

"What are you doing here?"

"I came to bring you in from this little field trip."

"No! You can't--you can't arrest me! You don't have--you don't have jurisdiction!"

"What are you talking about?"

Neal shook his head hard. "I would know if you were working for Interpol now." Neal looked around, his eyes wild. "I would know."

Peter swallowed back his own anxiety and forced himself to stay calm. He needed to get Neal to the hospital, but he didn't want to take him by force. "Neal, stop. Try to remember. I'm your friend. You work with me."

Neal sneered. "Nice try."

"Suit!" Peter heard Mozzie's voice and turned around to see Neal's myopic friend squinting into the darkness. "Neal?"

"Over here!"

Neal saw Mozzie approaching and his eyes widened. "The robin flies at dawn!"

"Thank you, but the robin isn't going anywhere right now."

Neal looked at Mozzie then tilted his head toward Peter. "But--"

"He's delirious," Peter said under his breath.

"Obviously." Mozzie crouched down in front of Neal and shook his head. "Neal, we've got to get you out of here. Peter's a friend, remember?"

"No!" Neal looked back and forth between them and suddenly looked less certain. "No, I don't remember. Or--I don't" He wrapped his arms more tightly around himself and shivered harder. "I don't--I don't feel right."

"I know, buddy." Peter reached out to put a hand on Neal's shoulder, and Neal shot him an uneasy look but didn't protest. "Will you let me help you up?"

Neal looked around Peter to Mozzie again. "Moz?"

"Please let the Suit help you before your brains get any more poached than they already are."

Neal nodded slowly. "Okay."

Peter put his hands under Neal's arms and hoisted him to his feet then held him as he swayed and tried to collapse back down into a shivering ball again. "No no, hey, stay with me. Can you feel your feet?"

Neal nodded then swayed harder until Mozzie rushed in to brace him from the other side. They made their shambling way to Peter's car, and once Peter got Neal into the back seat he turned to look at Mozzie. "Are you coming?"

Mozzie looked around uncomfortably for a moment before agreeing. "Yes. Fine."

Driving to the hospital was the easy part. Convincing the hospital staff that Neal had malaria rather than a bad flu was considerably more difficult but within half an hour Neal was in a bed with an IV in his arm, shivering under a pile of blankets with his feet soaking in warm water to treat a mild case of frostbite. The doctor was running tests to confirm the presence of malaria as well as the specific strain, and they were planning to keep Neal overnight to get him started on the antimalarial drugs and to monitor him for any further complications.

Mozzie had left by the time Neal got taken back to be treated, but Peter had no doubt Mozzie was keeping an eye on Neal's progress using his own sketchy means. Peter was determined to stay, at least until Neal's fever had come down far enough for Neal to be more aware of his surroundings. If Neal woke up and decided he didn't want to be in the hospital, he could end up back outside melting the snow with his fever again, and that wasn't a risk Peter was willing to take.

~~~

As Neal woke up, the first thing he knew was that his whole body ached. He felt a chill and tried to burrow down into his bed, but the bedding was all wrong. Instead of his plush mattress and thick, billowy comforter he was on a stiff mattress with scratchy blankets, and he opened his eyes to see a white ceiling, a IV stand, a white and blue striped curtain around his bed and...oh. "Peter?"

"Hi there. Are you feeling better?"

"Um, better than what?" As quickly as he could ask the question, Neal remembered feeling worse, though he wasn't sure exactly how long ago that had been. "Malaria?"

"That's right."

"But Mozzie was bringing me my prescriptions. What happened?"

"You decided to go for a walk in the snow."

Neal rubbed a hand over his face, trying to figure out what was going on. "Why'd I do that?"

"Apparently you had a very high fever and thought it was a good idea." Peter sighed. "But you're going to be okay."

"Oh. That's good." Neal yawned and shivered. His eyes were almost closed when he felt something on his chest--Peter pulling an extra blanket up over him.

"Go back to sleep," Peter said gently.

Warm and safe, Neal let himself fall.


End file.
